Medianeras (2011)
Medianeras (Sidewalls in English) is the quintessential movie about loneliness in the big city, told from the individual perspectives and mostly seperate stories of Mariana and Martin, two characters who live in shoebox apartments in Buenos Aires. It’s quirky and sad and funny, then cycles back for more rounds of quirky, sad, and funny. Both characters suffer from their own phobias, anxiety, and seclusion, and attempt to find ways out through bad dates, swimming, photography, and more, while passing time in their apartments with self-amusement and early 2010s tech. Usually, the attempts fall flat.
According to to my Letterboxd journal, I hadn’t seen this since April 2017 until rewatching it tonight. It took almost 9 years to revisit this Argentinian gem! You know when you revisit a movie years later and it doesn’t hold up? Or maybe you've changed a lot since last watching and can't connect with that movie anymore? I've sure changed, but I'm grateful that Medianeras is still a favorite of mine. It’s still an exceptional film, and it made me realize two things:
2011 was a helluvah of a year for indie films.
I need a Where’s Waldo shirt.
